


Girl Talk

by Thimblerig



Series: The Lion and the Serpent [32]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Aftermath of Violence, Dialogue Heavy, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Milady’s head is not a happy place, Queen Anne is not having a good day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-08-23 13:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 10,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8329804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: Compassion was a wicked word.





	1. Compassion was a wicked word.

**Author's Note:**

> In which Milady and the Queen utterly fail the Bechdel Test. 
> 
> This will mean *nothing* if you haven't read at least Kindness of Strangers 
> 
> To be clear on continuity, neither has heard of Aramis reaching the army camp, so they're dealing with erroneous information. Brief, non-graphic mention of a badly healing wound.

Somewhere outside a bare plaster-walled room painted faintly with afternoon light a bell tolled. Women's voices raised in contrapuntal chants. The coarse woollen sheets and scratchy shift she was wrapped in smelt faintly of lavender, which did not mask the scent of old sweat, or the sickly-sweet odour of a rotten wound. She decided it were best not to think on her aching, burning right hand, however much it made her feel like a cat with its paw caught in a trap, furious and hating. Which left -

“Now that you are somewhat awake,” the Queen said, “tell me how Aramis died.”  

She swallowed, throat still dry. “Where are we?” she croaked.

“A convent of Poor Clares near Bourbon-les-Eaux,” said the Queen, smiling slightly. “I give an endowment every year, and visit often, in thanks for my deliverance from foul assassins. I believe you are familiar with that story.”

More of her chickens come home to roost. How delightful. Here she was, injured and ill, dependant on the _compassion_ of a woman with solid reason to loathe her. Trapped, caught -

“You gave Minister Treville and I quite the start, intruding on our meeting.” The Queen was dressed simply, in pale, dull colours, her fair hair falling in loose ringlets over one shoulder. “I would personally like to know how you got so far into the palace while dripping wet and bleeding.”

“I have many skills.” Compassion was a wicked word. She had used it herself often enough as a trap, been trapped by it herself when she was very young and very stupid. And sometimes it was the cover of a bargain, honey gold and sickly sweet, made when one was weak, and in need, and powerless to dictate terms. It seemed the price for today was questions.

“Quite the story, your little list.”

She surged up out of the bed, or tried to, pushed back by sudden dizziness. “Tell me you did something useful with it.” Memory pushed at her, the candlelight and darkness of the First Minister’s office, the ovals of Treville and the Queen's disbelieving faces, her own voice, snarling, _Why would I lie? Your precious musketeer Aramis died for this._ The humiliation of fainting for real.

The Queen regarded her, face unreadable, then nodded slightly.

“Tell me how he died,” she said again.

“Bravely. Does that please you to know?”

The Queen's eyes flickered. “I need more details.”

She gestured, awkwardly, at her ribs. “A blade through here, into the lung. It would have been quick.”

“Did you do it?”

She rolled her eyes. “Ridiculous question. We were travelling together. Spanish caught up. Fighting on the road.” Her throat was starting to burn, from the dryness. The Queen eased up her head with one hand, offered water from the wooden cup with the other. More _compassion._  

“So you left him to die?” the Queen asked when she had set down the cup.

“It wasn't the plan,” she said, throat still dry, “but he understood the practicalities.” And he had, she'd seen it in his eyes before they closed. They'd known what they were about when they started that race with the list of ships, known the numbers balanced in the pans of the scale. Even she, self-involved as she was, had understood the numbers.  _So it goes. No regrets._

“You said you travelled together. For how long?”

“A year.”

“Were you lovers?”

“Would you be troubled if I said yes? Would you believe me if I said no?” She rolled her head on the pillow. “Ask better questions.” The Queen watched her, silently. She shut her eyes and said, “I'm tired.”

She was trapped here. Her own body betrayed her, feverish, and weak as a blind kitten, and the price of shelter was Aramis rendered up entire - the year she had of him. He would have cared what was said of him, she thought, especially to this woman, if he'd ever remembered her. But he'd understood the practicalities, also, known that there was nothing she would not trade, or discard, or kill for her own survival. _Piss on regret._ She was not ready to turn her face to the wall and die and so she would speak.

But not today.     

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've no idea what order the nuns really belonged to. In the era, some convents and monasteries were political and economic powerhouses, with lots of wealthy patrons and good eating (literally and figuratively). This convent seems to have embraced a sparser aesthetic, so I took a guess.


	2. Sufficient unto the day...

_ Aramis is dead. _

She wanted to scream it to make the rafters echo, out-howl the storm, crack the oceans from their basins and drown the land… And instead she was cleaning up messes and tending to the sick, prudent as any housewife.

_ Aramis is dead. _

She'd told herself it was for the best, known it, wished him her blessing when he took himself away from Paris, from reminding Louis’ inconstant eye of accusations regarding his wife and heir.  _ Go with God,  _ she'd thought, and promised herself that her feelings would calm, that her longing could fade and be kept safe like a flower tucked between the pages of a much-loved book of poems. She had lasted four months and eight days before asking Athos, come back on short leave, to tell her where his fellow soldier had gone. When he refused, stone-faced, she had begged.  _ I do not know,  _ he'd answered.  _ Your Majesty. I do not know. _ And the stone of his face cracked, and she believed him.

_ Aramis is dead. _

Two years gone, and the son she had carried under her heart with pain was walking now, healthy and strong and brave, and he would never see that. He died alone. Did he think of her, as the life trickled out?

_ Aramis is dead. _

Dreary autumn rain trickled down outside the narrow window; all the world was drear. Aramis was dead and the woman who had left him to die lay in a narrow bed, cheeks flushed scarlet, her eyes following her as she moved around the room.

“You look better, today,” she said.

“I sincerely doubt it,” Milady de Winter croaked in answer. “What would you? For I doubt this is a social call.”

One must consider the practicalities, not so? She looked down at the pillow in her hands, a coarse, flat thing stuffed with raw wool from the convent’s flock. Aramis was dead, and the woman who had claimed the last year of his life watched her, still as a lioness brought to bay.

She stepped forward briskly, shoes clicking on the flags of the floor, raising the pillow. She slipped a hand under de Winter’s head, the cropped hair lank with oil and old sweat, lifted it. She tucked the pillow under the ill woman's head, stepped back, sat on her hard wooden chair.

She smiled slightly. “Who was behind San Sebastian?” she asked.

De Winter drew breath. “Who asks? The First Minister or Her Majesty?”

She raised her chin. “Myself.” This… abomination… was an attack on her home. She needed to know.

De Winter gave her some names, candidly enough - some of them she knew. “Vargas,” de Winter added, “you should never have let leave Paris, whatever the inducement.”

“That was not my decision,” she answered grimly. So many things were not.

“I do not believe,” said de Winter, shrewdly, “that the King of Spain had anything to do with it, not even a drunken wish spoken in idleness. He would have accepted a  _ fait accompli,  _ perhaps, as he accepted the loss of General Tariq, but it is not in his character to wish for something like San Sebastian.”

“And how would you know that?” she said sharply. “Did you bed my  _ brother,  _ also?”

De Winter gave a short bark of laughter. “Not at all. When I spoke with Phillip I was half a nun: very chaste, very pure.” She lowered her eyelids and said, quietly sly, “Aramis was the theology half.”

“... What?”

The other yawned. “I'm tired. Ask me tomorrow.” She turned on her side and shut her eyes. Her breathing deepened into sleep.

She rose, gathering the simple skirts she affected at the convent about her and walked to the door. She had work to do. Even with Treville’s help, even with the Mother Superior’s grim-faced assistance and the network of religious houses she wrote to regularly, even with Constance's quiet capability, organising a relief effort - in secret - was a daunting business. It were easier to take the plague ships out to sea and sink them, she knew. When the survivors - if there were survivors - talked… she shook her head ruefully.  _ Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.  _

Busy as she was, she knew she would come back to this room.

Aramis was dead, the story of his years stopped mid-chapter. There was only one person who could fill out the tale, and so she would come back. She lifted her chin and strode down the corridor.  

_ Aramis is dead. _


	3. “Do you think me a savage?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Discussion of canon non-con and attempted non-con in this chapter, not at all graphic but they're delving into emotional context here, and I don't want to upset anyone.

“... So we converted half the stolen gold into lace, and simply walked it out through the gates hidden under our skirts. Aramis helped by wearing old fashioned trunk-hose and stuffing them nice and solid.” She raised her nose in an imitation of a pompous gentleman lifting his ribboned shoes high to keep them out of the horse dung.

“What was he like, when you travelled together?”

“I've been telling you what we did for a week now.”

“But what was he _like?”_

“A perfect, gentle knight: valiant in war, benevolent in peace.” She blinked her eyes innocently and the Queen raised one fair eyebrow. Twitching her lips, she rephrased: “An efficient killer. Clever and proud of it. Weak against infants and women in peril. _Appallingly_ chirpy in the mornings, when he had a good morning.”

“You say that so lightly,” the Queen softly.

“The killing?” She thought about it and shrugged. “You knew him as a soldier; surely you realised there was more to it than parades and guard duty. In the miracle trade... he was quick to strike, when there was cause for it, and accurate. But he always did what was needful, no more and no less: efficient.” She hesitated, arranging her words. “There is a seductiveness to slaughter: to the hard-won fight, to the taste of the blood in your mouth, to the power of cutting the thread of a life, that is far headier than wine, Your Majesty. I've seen it take assassins as much as soldiers, killing for the intoxication instead of the job. Aramis drank of it - he liked the taste - but never to excess.” The Queen's face was very blank. “I'm saying this is a good thing,” she added, to clarify. “A commendable aspect of his character.” At the other's raised eyebrow she said, “Do you think me a savage?”

“I don't know what you are.”

“He had a wonderfully light touch for intrigue, did Aramis. I swear, marks would walk up to him and just tell him their secrets and heartfelt needs. It was because he liked people, I imagine; that isn't something I have a gift for.”

“I noticed,” said the Queen dryly.

She opened her eyes wide and dewy and fluttered her eyelashes in distress. “Have I - have I offended?” She lowered her eyelids a little. “Oh please, forgive me.”

“Continue,” said the Queen crisply, but there was the hint of a smile in the corner of her little mouth. A sense of humour, then.

She touched the woman lightly on the wrist and went on.

“We put the other half of the gold into oranges. You'll like the trick of that, I expect. I'll tell you tomorrow; I'm tired.”

“You always speak of tricks,” the Queen said softly, “yours and his. Was he never an honorable man?”

“Honour?” She tried to stop her upper lip from curling, and failed. “That isn't a virtue I have much truck with, Your Majesty.” The Queen's face was again very blank. Well, to hell with it all.

“I was born in a criminal slum,” she said bluntly, “dirty and mean. Many say those such as I have no honour at all. Others that the only honour is to stay where God put me, at the bottom of the Chain of Creation. Your Majesty. I am unstudied in honour.

“I wanted better for myself, once. I headed for the countryside pretending to be a Curè’s demure sister, with a dirty tricks man as my ‘brother’ for the look of it. I caught the eye of a little Comte, who loved me. He was a quiet, stiff sort of a fellow, not at all flashy, but he loved me.

“I thought he meant to offer some kind of concubinage but no, proper marriage all the way. He was a romantic, my little Comte, and an honorable man. And somewhere, in all that, I fell in love with _him.”_ She clicked her tongue, and went on, “Perhaps the honorable thing to do then would have been to tell him all the sordid details of my past, and trust him not to throttle me when he smelled the whiff of Parisian gutter still on me, but instead I tried to make the lie real.” She dropped her eyes. “I trusted him to trust me, and yet I was afraid to put that to the test. Still,” she added, forcing cheer into her voice, “there's no sense fretting over might-have-beens. I paid off my ‘brother’ with wedding jewellery and drove him away with threats.” Meditatively she said, “Now _there's_ a death I regret not making.” She heard clothing rustle, as the Queen shifted on her stool.

Eyes still down, she said, “I loved the little Comte, and he loved me, and for a time we were happy. But as it happens, the little Comte had a brother, whose eye also fell on me and, in the manner of a street-thief or a nobleman, disliked being told ‘no’. I held young Thomas off for a time, with a woman's blandishments and evasions - I believe he considered himself to be _flirting,_ he certainly had a clear conscience and unruffled mien about it all. But then, one day, Thomas appeared with  papers listing my past crimes in great detail.”

“From your ‘brother’?” asked the Queen, neutrally.

She nodded. “Thomas considered himself an honorable man: perhaps he would have kept his fingers off his brother's lady wife in the end. But a gold-digging thieving gutter tramp? Innocence - the appearance of Innocence - is a poor shield, but once it is gone...” She shrugged. “I panicked. The next thing I knew, there was blood on my hands, and hard hands were on me, and my beautiful Athos was reading a list of my crimes.” She heard a hiss as she spoke her husband’s name. 

She caught the Queen's blue eyes with her gooseberry green ones. “Of course I was not believed. Any imputation of impropriety on a woman's part will damn her entire. I was slated for execution in the morning.”

The Queen, straight backed, asked, “how did you survive?”

She swallowed around a dry throat, and only stopped herself from rubbing the hanging scar by reaching for the cup of water on the night stand. “I discovered, then, what I would do, for the sake of drawing breath. I am a woman who will prostitute herself to her executioner for a bare chance of surviving the next morning, when any right-thinking lady would die virtuous and undefiled, and make the end to her story sad and _pretty._ Honorable. _”_

She paused, gulping from her cup.  

“I have since gone to great effort that the sad and pretty _tragedies_ happen to those who are not _me._ Honour is not a virtue I have any truck with."  She tossed her head. “Aramis... he knew what I was; he saw me bare. And even a poisonous, honourless, betraying _bitch_ such as myself, he was fond of.

“That is what your musketeer was like.”

She set the empty cup down with a click and turned her cropped head away. “I'm tired. Ask me something tomorrow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "She heard a hiss as she spoke her husband’s name" - It occurred to me that Queen Anne probably didn't know Milady's back story with Athos. Like, at all.
> 
> "... And we converted half the stolen gold into lace…” - raided from a biography of Giacomo Casanova, famed lover, cabalist, intriguer, prison escaper, and adventurer. I'll note that in the original story there was no converting gold into lace - it was his personal property when he tried to skip on a soldiering contract. Trunk-hose - those short ballooning pants popular in the Elizabethan era. Could be stuffed with bran or one's household linen to get them nice and firm, and matched with form-fitting stockings to show off a gentleman's shapely legs. _I am not making any of this up._


	4. The woman was a liar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for length - this is how it wanted to go.

The woman was a liar, she knew. Even as de Winter described her marriage and its ending with a raw openness in her eyes, she knew that the woman was a liar.

Athos had never mentioned his relation with the dark woman, and sunk in her own anger and humiliation at her presence in her husband’s bed - and in the exhaustion that dragged at her for months after her son’s birth - she truly did not notice any interaction between them, the few times he was on duty at the Louvre.

She liked the Musketeer Captain, trusted him as she dared trust very few. Even as she watched de Winter lie huddled in the narrow bed, exhausted as if from  _ birthing  _ the story, she found herself searching for mitigating circumstances, reasons why it might have seemed the best thing to do to hang his wife without trial. She did not want to believe quiet, sad, honourable Athos would do such a thing. She felt her system flood with a choking fear, felt the icy line of a garrotte laid across her throat -

The woman was a liar, and a manipulator. She had admitted as such, baldly, eyes glinting, but one could see it, also, in whatever great and shadowy secret she was tiptoeing around in her stories, in the tiny, broken tales themselves that were scattered like breadcrumbs between them - a ruse so transparent it made her seem like a scared child and engendered a powerful urge to wrap her in another blanket. And was that itself a manipulation?

She did not think she would look at Athos the same way again.

“I like you too,” she said, very low, and covered her mouth, startled.

De Winter, face turned to the wall, made no sound. 


	5. Don't you realise what I am, yet?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll reiterate the warning about Milady's head space. Some minor bad language at the end.

“I like you too,” she heard and made no answer, but stared at the bare plaster, familiar as the back of her hand.  _ Ridiculous, _ she thought.  _ Don't you realise what I am, yet? _

“I am not good at liking women either,” the Queen continued, as hesitant as at a confession. “Too many of the Cardinal's spies in my entourage, or political appointments, or good, kind-hearted women sent away on flimsy excuses as soon as I showed them a little favour. It was very lonely, before Constance came.”

_ Poor little rich girl,  _ she thought,  _ spare me the sobbing.  _ It was good to be liked, she knew, it might be a crucial edge while she was bound here by fever and fatigue and a mucky wound, weak enough to be smothered by a pillow. And yet, contrariwise, she hated the gift of it. Perhaps she only trusted what had been stolen, was that it? Aramis would have had something to say to that, along with many words on proper wound cleaning. Well. He would have had a point. About the wound.

“You slipped into my husband’s bed the night my son was near death, and I do not think I can ever forgive that.” Was it the lack of faithfulness she minded, or the guarding of territory? Or was she truly mindful of Louis‘ actions when his son was ill? Did the Queen think that she had seen the bottom of his heart, that night, and found it lacking? Was that her fault, the revelation? Pheh, Louis had been the easiest of meat then, predictably. A man who had recently killed; a man who was grieving; a man who was afraid: they were all easy to catch, though rather more difficult to hang on to.

“But I saw you in Marmion’s fortress, also,” the Queen said, beautifully relentless. Oh God, this? “Whatever your reasons, it was brave, and loyal, and - ” 

“Boredom,” she interrupted, then bit her tongue. But she wasn't lying. Waiting on Marmion’s monologuing, the machinations covering the grief, had been so very tedious. Best just to kill someone you wanted dead, and the even odds of a coin flip were hardly a terror -

“Boredom, if you like,” said the Queen. “But you were glorious. I respect your courage; I respect your strength.”

She had a sudden urge to roll over and hit the woman. Best not.

“Thank you for the life of my son.”

She might really gag, here.

“Don't worry,” the Queen said, wry amusement in her voice. “I'll probably find a reason to hate you again soon enough.”

_ Bitch. _

It were better that the Queen liked her.

“He liked chocolate with ambergris,” said Milady suddenly, still staring at the wall. “After he met the Doge of Venice’s mistress-en-titre, he talked about drinking it for weeks. A bit of a sensualist, that one. After that, sometimes I'd buy a few grains of whale-spit just to see him - be still for a while.”

A rustle of the Queen's dull blue skirts. "Perhaps you can tell me about Venice tomorrow."

Perhaps. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Milady is, uh, not good at receiving compliments.
> 
> I think Aramis, were he truly dead and watching from heaven, would have been delighted that his two best girls were bonding by discussing his life. The actual alive version? Intense mortification blending into horror...
> 
> “I am not good at liking women either” - y'know, I do think a lot of Louis's awfulness comes from the pressure he's under. There are a lot of threats he has to worry about, and he had a profoundly unsettled childhood that weakened his foundations. But Anne is under a lot of similar pressures and, I think, a helluva lot more isolated, and she's still trying to improve the world instead of whining that everyone has betrayed her. I am judging my monarchs, and picking my favourite. 
> 
> "mistress-en-titre" - official mistress. What Milady was aiming for with Louis.


	6. "That part was true."

_The ship’s lantern swayed from the low ceiling, throwing erratic shadows over the elegant profile of the man steadying himself against the steady surge of the open waves. His hair was wild, even for him. She dropped her eyes to the line of his neck, where purple-blue blotches trailed from the stubble of his underjaw, down the tender skin of his throat, over the ridge of his collar-bone, to disappear beneath the sheet draped precariously around his shoulders._

_“Those Danish students were right about their cure for sea-sickness, then?”_

_“Yes,” he said, with great dignity. “But, you’ll look at the letter?”_

_A rope of braided brown hair slipped over the edge of the top bunk as the little maid over her said, drowsily, “What is it, do you need the bucket again?”_

She broke off the tale suddenly. “But perhaps this tale is a little bawdy for you, Your Majesty?”

The Queen sat frozen, the tips of her fingers at her lips. Slowly, like the water of a lake when the spring melt occurred, a line of red crept up her throat, her face, her ears. She swallowed hard, coughed. “You may continue,” she squeaked.

“But I would not want to embarrass you,” she said, innocently solicitous.

"You have never struck me as a simple woman,” the Queen said gravely, regaining her poise. “There is a point to all of your stories, a foible, and a forte.”

“No shield?”

“I think you like to live dangerously.”

Involuntarily, her lips quirked. “He used to use his cloak as one,” she said thoughtfully. “He’d wind it around one arm when he needed something to parry with, or a grapple to pull things around. Everything’s a weapon, if you want it to be.

She shrugged. “There isn’t much more to the story,” she said, waving her bandaged hand. “He woke me in the middle of the night, very rumpled, to... creatively edit the letter they were carrying.”

“Why?”

“It was a warrant for their own execution,” she said baldly. “Someone had a _sense of humour._ I fudged the thing into something plausible and he slipped it back into their baggage while they were sleeping the sleep of the virtuous and well-”

“And this did not bother you at all?”

“If you had shared a ship’s berth with _that man_ puking out his innards at every turn of the glass while the maid _fusses_ like a _banty hen,_ then you would barely blink at unpacking your forgery kit at midnight, I promise you that.”

“No,” the Queen said, surrendering again to flusterment. “I mean… well. Well did it not bother you?”

She realised she was shrugging. “A cat wanders in the night, but I would not call it unfaithful. And we did not often compete for the same people; it was so very restful.”

Her coverlet twisted into peaks and furrows under her good hand. “I find,” she admitted, “that I enjoy myself more if I care not a whit for my dancing partner. It is easier for me to relax into the heat of it that way. It is simply more _fun.”_ She glanced at the Queen through her lashes, for once not even a little coy. “And that is a thing that I am.”

The Queen watched her, sweet and grave: listening. The woman had a silence that could pull out secrets. It was a terrifying weapon.

Her eyes dropped and she said harshly, “Did my experiences beat or train that into me? I wonder? Or did they merely bring it out, like a craftsman cracks and grinds the gem out of dull stone? But I promise you, Your Majesty, any man that noticed only burned hotter for it, the few that cared to see.

“Well?” she said, broken stones in her throat. “Aren’t you going to judge me? Oh, even better, grace and mercy look so good on you: tell me that I couldn’t help it. Go on, tell me that you’re _so sorry_ for me.”

Silence.

She looked up.

“No,” said the Queen.

A tiny dimple showed in one cheek. “I am not going to judge you and I am not so very sorry. Do you understand?”

Her Majesty shifted in her simple wooden chair, moved to rise -

_She slipped through the shadows of the Royal Apartments on silent feet, only habit keeping her bountiful skirts from rustling as she moved. None would stop her, not here, not now - she had a place in the Court, among the highest. She belonged._

_A door cracked open and she tucked herself neatly into an alcove behind an arras, out of sight. Reflex. From the cover she saw a woman peep through the opening, one of the ladies-in-waiting, her pale hair in a loose braid trailing over one shoulder. Marie? Mary-Grace? The governess, in any case. The woman looked left and right, assumed the corridor empty, and disappeared back into the quarters._

_One of her husband’s followers, Aramis, slipped out the door. He had the looks many women liked, long and lean with a fine, straight nose and dark eyes that might smoulder, given cause. He ran a quick hand through his mare's-nest hair, quick as a nervous cat and slipped down the hall._

_A patrolling guard’s heavy tread sounded and he, too, ducked behind the arras, and stumbled into the width of her skirts._

_As he saw her, his face smoothed to careful blankness; he put one finger to his lips. She made a slow and regal courtesy in response. He put his hand over his heart, fingers spread, and bowed, eyes on her as if he feared she would strike; this close she could smell a woman's spend on him._

_The footsteps retreated and the moment broke; they moved away._

“So that part was true,” said the Queen drearily, sagging back into her chair.

“That part was true,” she agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // Alas, his brief encounter with Rosencrantz and Guildernstern, or their analogues, has fallen from Aramis' own memory. But they recall him very fondly.
> 
> // There's also a group of fairy stories sometimes called "The Good Luck Child" or "The Devil's Grandmother" where a feckless but sweet young man is given a letter ordering his own death by a wicked king (for reasons), who spends a night on his travels with a band of robbers. Since robbing is what they do they go through his baggage in his sleep, find the letter, decide that this sort of behaviour is outside the pale (or perhaps it would be funny), and alter it to 'marry the bearer to my eldest daughter'. And the moral of that story is, be polite to robbers on your journey, especially if they have seasickness.
> 
> // _“There is a point to all of your stories, a foible, and a forte.”_ \- she’s using technical terms for a sword blade here - the ‘forte’ (strength) is the more solid part near the handle which you’re meant to catch attacks on; the ‘foible’ (also a quirk or minor character flaw) is the bit near the tip that you attack with - it’s fast, and close to your target. (How very military of the Queen.)


	7. A Life of Margaret

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which I continue to have complicated feelings about a particular s2 plotline, so let’s make a chapter about feeling complicated.

"So that part was true.”

She sagged into the chair, touching her fingers to her lips, eyes wide, and stared at the woman in the bed.

“She wasn’t the first noblewoman to take a handsome soldier for a lover,” de Winter said caustically. “Nor the first delicate virgin picking an illicit strawberry. Most get away with it.”

She swallowed around a sudden knot in her throat.

De Winter stared at her without pity. “He was a libertine before he met you, not so? Known for pleasing patronesses… Was this affair a little too close to the room where you slept for comfort? Or that you did not know of the liaison? Or - her dealings with Rochefort? Breathe, Your Majesty.”

She remembered, during the terms of her first pregnancy, and her second, writing out the Life of St Margaret at her little escritoire until her hand ached and her fingers stained with the ink: the account of a woman who promised her intercession in heaven to any who recounted her deeds, who witnessed her life. The passages of it were so familiar she could recount it word for word: a young maiden besieged by a cruel king, captivity, the _battering_ she received while she withheld that thing her assailant held so precious: her consent. St Margaret suffered so beautifully, did she not? So quiet, so brave, turning the whirlwind about her standing-place. She had admired the saint in her day, who sprang forth whole from the belly of a dragon and wrestled the devil sent against her. Who could argue theology with it.

Perhaps her sensibilities had fallen to the world since that time, for too often in later years she found herself thinking, _but Margaret died young, and how could that have gone differently?_

“I’ll answer three questions, if you like,” de Winter said at last.

“Was - was Rochefort blackmailing her then?”

“I imagine so,” said de Winter. “It was a tactic he liked.”

“Why didn’t she _tell_ me she was in trouble?”

“Confession never helped _me.”_ Then de Winter sniffed. “Speaking as a professional blackmailer, if it’s something they can shrug off easily it’s dangerous to try putting the bite on. But Rochefort was an expert at driving people where he wanted.”

She tasted the words in her mouth, feeling oddly shamed. “Who started it, did Aramis seduce her?”

De Winter stared at her, eyes expressionless and alien. She levered herself upright, swaying slightly, and touched her chin with one finger, turning her face back and forth for a better view.

“What are you looking for?” she said breathlessly.

“I’m looking for the answer you want,” said de Winter quietly. “Who do you want to be the villain here, who the victim, in this story?”

“The truth,” she whispered. “I want to know the truth.”

De Winter released her, settling back against the bolsters. “Well I can’t give you _that,”_ she said pettishly.

“You didn’t see? He never spoke of it?”

De Winter’s eyes flickered. “No.” Silence. “You want to know if he loved her.”

“Yes.”

De Winter’s eyes flickered again, reading who knew what scenes off the back of her eyelids. “He usually liked his lovers,” she said thoughtfully. “I am including Dolores the Assassin in this list. He loved wit, flair, and courage, and dainty hands, and kindness. A quality of imperiousness helped.”

Her chin tilted up and de Winter snickered.

“He was insufferable in his mornings after, very cheerful, with a smile hiding in the crinkles around his eyes however solemn he pretended to be. He loved to please.” She considered. “I do not think he loved her.” De Winter tilted her head, hair cropped short and ragged like the feathers of a disheveled crow. “Which, to you, would have been the greater betrayal, I wonder. I wonder.”

“I don’t know,” she whispered, miserable.

And then the devil in her bed asked, “Was it here, that you conceived the Dauphin?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _St Margaret suffered so beautifully_ \- one of several saints who died young and left a pretty corpse with, uh, some kind of moral victory in there. The beauty of passive resistance, maybe? (St Sebastian’s tale hits some similar beats, with the torture-porn and the early death.) Part of Margaret’s story involved being swallowed by a dragon and bursting out of it, which might be why she’s a patron of childbirth. Her Life very explicitly promises intercession in Heaven to someone who copies out the tale, which is probably why there are a lot of copies of it floating around. There’s a point where she orders the forces against her to come forth, whereupon a demon appears and she kicks it around the cell. And they talk metaphysics.
> 
> (I’m sorry if I’m taking this lightly: I’m not actually good at religion.)


	8. She thirsted.

_The light of the sparse candles had dyed the simple plaster walls shades of peach and gold, a tiny perfect world like a bead of amber. She would kept it safe she thought, closeted away like the precious thing it was._

“Was it here, that you conceived the Dauphin?”

_She’d felt so bare, as if she’d lost a layer of skin and the simple silken shift - sans stays, sans petticoats, sans sleeves and ruffs and metal pins in her hair - had traced every passing sigh of air against her._

“It would have been a short pregnancy, but they say the Dauphin was a small baby. You are so very hedged about with courtiers and ladies-in-waiting it would have been hard to… fit things in, elsewhere. Perhaps the nuns were lax in supplying a chaperone.”

_The scratchy woollen sheets of the Mother Superior’s bed had retained the faintest trace of incense over lavender - ever-after she could not walk in a church without remembering what else was holy, holy, holy._

“So… here. Does that make me the child’s godmother? What a thought - I’m the least motherly person I know.”

“Not in this room,” she said distantly. “It’s complicated.”

_All that summer she had watched him, a brave and gallant chevalier, and watched him watch her._

“He was so very kind,” she said. “He saved my life at Easter, did you know?”

_The shocking heaviness of a man on top of her, a hardened soldier, the jab of his weapons and armour and the press of the icy ground of the prison yard - she’d found bruises on her skin that night. He’d kept very still over her, shielding her from the tumult and the danger with his body and afterwards he’d stroked her hair and whispered, over and over, “It’s safe, it’s over, look at me, I’ve got you,” until she could breathe again._

“I left the land of my birth when I was fourteen and since that time there has not been a week I am not reminded that I am _foreign._ Unwanted. The enemy.”

_She had seen him with his companion Porthos in a receiving chamber awash with light, both of them so straight and tall, his leather coat primly buttoned up his throat for perhaps the only time in his life and a stray lock of hair obstinately sticking out from the top of his head. Her fingers itched to smooth it. He’d, he’d actually glowed as she touched the tiny wound at the corner of his jaw._

_The admiration in his eyes was a pitcher of clear water in a dry land and she had not realised how she thirsted until she began to drink._

“I imagine that you have seen versions of this story many times,” she said, looking at de Winter. The woman’s poison green eyes acknowledged it.

And did Marguerite, pale, shy Marguerite newly come from a country estate, did she also thirst? How many golden-amber moments did she tuck away before the trouble came? Or - did she suspect, as de Winter had, that Aramis did not truly care for her and notice her handsome lover pulling away in a thousand unspoken moments that felt like the ground falling away under her feet? There could be no truth, now, only guesses.

_He’d watched her, eyes dark and very still, as if he might drink her down with his sight. She might die the next day. He might. This hanging moment, like a step caught over a threshold, could not be repeated. But now she was in a night tender, sweet, and juicy as a ripe peach and she thirsted and hungered. In the strong circle of Aramis’ arms, warm and safe, conscious of the salt-smell and the musk, the languor of her limbs and the heat of his spend on her belly, she tucked her head into the arch of his stubbled throat and whispered, “I want all of it.”_

“So you took the opportunity to try for a child,” de Winter said. “Very reasonable.”

She put her hands on her knees, felt her fingers gripping hard enough to bruise through her skirts and petticoats.

“He did so love to please,” de Winter added helpfully.

“Is there,” she said in some disbelief, “is there truly nothing you don’t try to spoil?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // I read… like, somewhere… about a trope called ‘Interview with the Devil’ - where a character talks with a monster or primal being or shadow. It’s not really about temptation, though tempting can be a part of it, but more about being lured, or forced, into finding your own truth. This is Anne’s interview. (Don’t worry; it isn’t over yet.)
> 
> // _“It would have been a short pregnancy, but they say the Dauphin was a small baby._ \- My personal explanation for why nobody immediately asked questions about a kid coming along nine months after the Queen went running around in the woods with a bunch of soldiers (sorry if that’s crass) - that it wasn’t nine months.


	9. "Naif or pragmatist?"

She was reminded, again, of how little there was of the tame about de Winter. Like a cat - cosseted and fed dainties like the Cardinal’s infernal beasts, or starved and come in out of the rain - blood was something she was always ready to draw.

“Is there,” she asked the invalid, “is there truly nothing you don’t try to spoil?”

“Spoil what?” De Winter’s face showed only mild admiration. “A ‘legitimate’ heir to stave off civil war, another warm body between Gaston and the throne - have you _met_ Monsieur le Prince? It would be the prudent, housewifely thing to do, for a woman whose kitchen is all of France. And I know you love France. Mother of God help you.”

Her eyes dropped from de Winter’s bed to her knees, where sad-coloured, figured fabric rucked up under her fingers.

“A strong, healthy, loyal man, there in the cradle of your arms…” A shiver ran down her spine. “He even had the right hue of hair and eye. Who's to say it wasn't.... wasn't _meant:_ God helping those who help themselves.”

“No.”

“Tell me you didn't think it. You have never been a stupid woman. A little naive at times, but that rubs off soon enough.”

She startled herself into a soft bark of laughter. “I thought it.” She smoothed the cloth over her knees, careful and precise, and rose. She paced to the window, where clammy drizzle trickled down. There would be sleet soon. She set her hands on her hips and looked over her shoulder. “In this I would appreciate your candor.  Did Aramis say anything to you that indicated he felt… prevailed on, in any way?”

“We are not discussing his story,” de Winter said smoothly, “but yours.”

“Hm.”

She turned again to watch at the woman in the bed, far too well-trained to lean against the wall, and folded her hands in front of each other. “He was in pain,” she said after a time. “It was grief, for one of the nuns who died in the assault. They had been lovers when they were young and he grieved for her, and for the life that might have been. He was in pain and my instinct was to provide comfort.”

_\- the bow of his back as he curled around himself on the bench, hands buried in his disordered hair, the musket still on his knees, guarding -_

She glanced down and then up.

“Do you ever do something for kindness and wonder, after, how much of it was… the practicalities? Or simple desire?”

“My moments of self-doubt generally turn in the other direction,” said de Winter, smiling a little.

“Even so.”

“The chance for a man of his background to put his son on the throne? Many would count that a great favour,” added de Winter. 

“How well did you think you knew him?” she asked curiously. A challenge swam in de Winter’s eyes.

_Warmed to the core, she tucked her head into the arch of his stubbled throat and whispered, “I want all of it.”_

_Aramis’ hands on her, calloused and gentle, moved her away that he might look at her properly. “What would you like all of, Your M- Anne?” His face was exceedingly solemn, but she thought she could see smiles hiding in the corners of his eyes. “All of this?” His hands moved again and she startled into a giggle. “Or this?”_

_“No,” she whispered, when she could breathe again. “This can’t happen again, I know. But I want it. The little moments, the things that make you laugh, the stumbles. If only for tonight, I want it._

_His eyelashes flickered and she froze, wondering if she had asked too much. But his mouth curled into a smile of such sweetness -_

_“Tell me a story. Something true.”_

“So,” said de Winter, “pillow talk.”

“Something you are an expert in, I would imagine.”

“Oh yes.” De Winter tilted her head, graceful as a little serpent. “What did you speak of?”

“Little things, a lot of them. Favourite books and youthful infatuations. Child-minding, when one is also a child, and how dignified and responsible that feels. The ice in his bones at the tail end of one winter, after he’d been left for dead with a slaughtered troop of men, too dazed and stiff to light a fire so he borrowed all their cloaks to hide under and tried to remember he wasn’t dead with them.” She dropped her eyes, meditative. “How it felt when his mother sent him away to the country. The marigolds I was gathering when I was told I had become an asset in a land deal - and why should one fuss about that, isn’t it what royal women are for, treaty tokens and brood mares? One’s parents do their best to make a good deal I believe.

“What does anyone speak of, with someone they like very much and hardly know?” She blew air through her lips. “But later in the night, when we came again to the crisis, I asked him not to pull away. It was not hope for a child; if I could have merged with his skin to be closer I would have done so.”  

She listened to the rain drumming outside.

“You do not believe me.”

De Winter’s lips twitched in a slight smile.

“Which answer would you prefer, naif or pragmatist?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // I wanted to privilege the Aramis/Anne relationship somehow, while still acknowledging that Aramis had loved, and would continue to love, other people. ‘One night of shared orgasms’ doesn’t cut it for me, and ‘Babies are Relationship Fodder’... eh. So: shared secrets. This version of Anne knows things about Aramis that he doesn’t easily share with other people.
> 
> // _sad-coloured_ \- of somber or sober hue. Queen Anne, however rich her fabrics, for the most part wears quite subdued colours, dallying a little with pastels and white in s3. Until she gets to the coronation, at which point it is BRILLIANT AZURE ROCK CRYSTAL LIT UP FROM THE BACK SO WE CAN APPRECIATE THE COLOURS LOOK AT THE QUEEN REGENT SHE IS GLORIOUS. Ahem. Colour codes as part of characterisation, etc. etc. ('Figured' just means there’s a pattern woven or printed into the fabric.)
> 
> // _the bow of his back as he curled around himself on the bench, hands buried in his disordered hair, the musket still on his knees, guarding_ \- a charming badass who is also in pain? That’s like catnip _dipped in chocolate._
> 
> // _Child-minding, when one is also a child_ \- this is actually a reference to Anne, whose real-life counterpart (apparently) mothered a lot of her younger siblings after their mother passed away. Also, I’m pretty sure baby!Aramis had swarms of little ones hanging off him. So.


	10. "The romantic heroine type..."

_In the smallest hours of the night, she blinked out of the tide of darkness, drowsy, still cradled in his arms._

_She could hear his heart beating, and felt the slow deep sigh of his breath - she listened to the pounding of heavy tools outside._

_Suddenly she was wide awake._

_He mumbled something incoherent as she eased herself from under his arm, pulling up the blanket. She sat on the edge of the bed, bare to the air and the night. Her eyes had adapted to the darkness; she could find things by their outline. And then she walked, pacing around the Mother Superior’s bedchamber. Her toes found a puddle of silk cloth on the floor, discarded as a Queen’s garments never were. She picked it up and smoothed it, awkwardly, an odd piece of domesticity for a woman whose life meant being waited on hand and foot. Restless, she found the other garments and stacked them on a bench against the wall. His shirt slipped off the pile of clothes and she caught it, setting it back on top._

_In the dark she touched the scratchy wool of the habit that had been offered her. She had declined to wear it that day - if it came to shooting inside the walls, she did not want the innocent women who sheltered her to be any more targets than was avoidable. Let Gallagher’s men know who they had been sent to kill. And still, a nun was dead. Isabelle - Helene? - who had changed her skin to join the convent and seemed… happy… with her choice. Settled, perhaps? She knew how deceptive appearances could be, and yet, Sister Helene seemed to hold a strong vocation. May she be blessed._

_She rubbed a fold of the habit between her fingers and thought about the Jolly Prussian._

_She had met Charlotte von Mellendorf briefly, when the young woman paid a courtesy call prior to the pilgrimage to the Bourbon-les-Eaux. The woman had been genuinely sympathetic about her childless marriage, she thought. Tactless, perhaps, in discussing her sisters’ many children, but her conversation lacked the subtle barbs that many noblewomen delivered so cheerfully to the Spanish Queen. Charlotte had a great capacity for liking and being liked, as vigorous and uncomplicated as a hunting dog. Her dowry was enormous, and an alliance with that country would be advantageous._

_She wondered morbidly if, after she was dead, they would give Charlotte her clothes. Waste not want not._

_It was not in her, this night, to grudge the Jolly Prussian her seat in the palace. Ha! She would give it with both hands, gladly, if she could._

_What if she did not come back from this place? If they told Louis that she had died - wouldn’t he be happier, paired with someone he could like? There was, there was even a body available, a woman of the right age, that could be wrapped in the Queen’s dress and given to the assassins. It was possible…_

_Her hands clenched._

“I’ve seen it done,” said de Winter. “Once to escape gambling debts, thrice to run off with a lover, and occasionally to cover a kidnapping.”

“Did it work?” she asked, looking down at her hands.

“Tolerably. Some of the… bereaved… don’t take a lot of convincing.”

“Hm. And when it didn't work?”

“A touch embarrassing for everyone involved. Why didn't you?”

“You mean, ask a man to desecrate the body of his first love that I might run off with him into obscurity parted from all livelihood and his other loved ones?”

“You make it sound so _romantic,”_ said de Winter, grinning. “That’s a reason for _him._ What was the reason for you?”

“Would _he_ have deserted a battlefield?” She looked down at her hands, her fingers now stilled. “Charlotte might have been a happy Queen, if the Cardinal did not eat her alive. I am unsure if she would have been a good one.” She turned again and paced about the room, staring blindly at plaster walls. “Mother of God help me,” she echoed, “I love this country. Call it arrogance, if you like. Call it blind obedience to the Chain of Creation. A foolish woman crying _Love me, please, I'll be better this time,_ to a husband that is displeased with her.” She put one hand flat against the plaster wall and felt the tiny grit under her fingers. “But God put me in this station and it were cowardly to flee.” She stepped away, dusting off the grains of plaster, and turned back to de Winter where she huddled under a shawl in the bed. “Not when I could still try to help.”

She returned to her chair, fussing with her skirts so that she did not have to look up. “You wondered, I think, if I were… tweaking the story of that night, to make myself look a little more the _romantic heroine_ type: the focus of a sweet and poignant story meant to pull at people's hearts.  Know, then, that when I remember what I thought in the heart of that darkness, with only God and a sleeping man for company, I feel _shame.”_ She looked up, at de Winter’s glittering, half-fevered eyes. “And I wonder still if I should have tried to run.”

_She slipped back under the covers, sinking into the warmth and simple luxury of human touch, and rested her head again on his breast._

_After a time his hand came up, stroking gently down her spine. He whispered daft soothments into her hair._

_It was only then that she realised she was crying._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know about you guys, but I needed a hanky myself by the last line. 
> 
> (I find out a lot about characters as I write them. This bit of introspection quite caught me off guard.) 
> 
> Special thanks to Phil the Stone for pointing out the clothes on the chair in the morning.


	11. Useful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for a short chapter; I hope it is a good read anyhow.

She twitched the shawl again around her shoulders, sober grey but woven of the finest woollen thread and shot in two colours so that it shimmered when it moved through changing light: nothing but the best for a Royal woman, or her castoffs.

The Queen sat still in the little chair, back very straight - Christ, what did it take to bow her? She touched the fingers of one dainty hand to her chest and then spread her slender arms wide. _“Touche,”_ she said softly, “heart’s blood. Did you hear what you wanted to hear?”

She rustled her shawl irritably. “Perhaps I did,” she answered.

“What _did_ you want from me?”

She huffed, looking away. “It doesn't matter.”

“I think it does.”

“Ours was a utilitarian relationship,” she said at last. “I work better that way.” She twisted inside, half anger and half shame. “Not that he was complaining, you understand.”

Compassion was a wicked word. It was a god-damned weazel, a tick that burrowed into your ribs, sapping your strength and throwing off your stride.

“I travelled with him for a year.”

Silently, the Queen filled a glass with two fingers-worth of crimson cordial, and pressed it into her good hand.

“Ever since he dropped down from the sky when another pair of hands was… useful. And he was _very_ useful. Also garrulous, reckless, whimsical, often lost, infuriating...” She sipped the cordial briefly, knowing she left red on her lips. “Every time we had a job with a brat involved I had to tread carefully, for he broke his heart over other’s children every fucking time.” The Queen did not blink at the coarseness. “Call it payment for a year's labour, if you like. But I wanted to know.” She twirled the cool glass in her fingers. “Even though he was past caring, I wanted to know, if the one child he could actually claim came about because he was… passingly useful.”

She scoffed, looking away. “A pointless notion. The _why_ is not nearly so useful as the _what,_ I've found.”

Cool fingers on her wrist. “Thank you for caring.” Damn the woman and her ridiculous, bleeding heart ways.

“What else do you want to know?” She was desperately tired of this game. She wanted to sleep, wanted to scratch someone's eyes out, to run wild in the woods like a character in one of his daft hero tales, wanted to be anything but this half-a-woman, shorn of hair and bound to a bed. She wanted it to be over.

“Did he ever… speak well of me?”

She moistened her lips for a pretty lie. Too late, for she heard the softest of gasps, the barest indrawing of breath.

Fuck compassion.

“He did not speak of you,” she said wearily. She looked up at the Queen, daring her to let it rest there. But all she could see was a woman, trying to be brave. Damn it.

“He did not speak of you because he could not," she said as gently as she could manage. "He did not remember you, or anything at all.”


	12. "Well then."

_It was the middle of the night and she was being kidnapped._

_Again._

_She clung tightly to the leather strap slung from the ceiling of the swaying carriage, bracing against every judder and surge. An enormous thud on the roof - a falling tree? - the carriage did not overturn. More thuds and sways, and she gripped tighter as it swung alarmingly around a bend which she knew had a drop over sharp rocks… another half mile and she would make her move._

_Something tried the handle. She trained her gun on it, keeping the pistol she'd retrieved from the corpse of Felton, that traitor, hidden in her skirts. A figure, black against the moonlight, loomed into the doorway._

_“Can a humble traveller beg a ride from a beautiful lady, madame?”_

_That voice, a light tenor, sweet and teasing… she knew it. The carriage swerved and moonlight lit his face: Aramis. He was dishevelled and wrapped in a dark cloak, his hair short and wild from the wind and wet, with a fine streak of blood running down, ignored, from a small cut in one eyebrow. He looked rakish, wild, and amused. And he carried no weapons. “Get in, Aramis,” she said brusquely. She flipped the gun in her hand and offered it to him. “Make yourself useful.”_

_He settled on the seat opposite her with a gracious little nod of the head. She glanced furtively down and kicked Felton’s arm, dislodged by the swaying of the coach, more securely under her own padded bench. And they stayed that way, in an oddly awkward, strangely companionable silence, for half a turn of a glass._

“The last I’d seen him was when I broke him out of a cell two hours ahead of an execution,” she offered the Queen. “It isn’t an occasion covered in most manuals of etiquette.”

“That was you?” the Queen asked softly. “Then I thank you.”

“Pff,” she said. “My husband was paying me well for that particular job, and it amused me: I enjoy putting my thumbprint on a day’s events. All in all, I do not regret the labour.” She twinkled a smile, and sipped some more cordial.

More reflectively, she added, “He was praying for your safety, when I found him, offering himself to God in exchange. Does that please you to know?” The Queen said nothing. “What he got was _me._ And is it not strange how things work out - here I always thought it was the luck of the _devil_ which impelled a creature such as myself.”  

“So you did not leave Paris together, then?”

She shook her head slightly. “I had another man on my mind when I left the city.” Smiling crookedly she added, “It didn’t work out. Then the money ran out in England and I had not the heart for trying to make another wealthy marriage… so I went back to work. Freelance, this time; I wanted freedom, you understand.”

She swirled the blood red liquid in her glass. “I was transporting papers that night, which required discretion. They were of some interest to France, among others, and I thought at first he was here on behalf of Athos, to take them from me.”

“But you armed him…”

She shrugged. “I have dealt with Athos’ men before. And it’s just as well - for there were more boarders.” She rolled her eyes. “Me; the Italian coachman who’d redirected the coach; whomever my last henchman Felton had flipped for, I think they were Savoyans; what I thought was Athos’ faction; and finally a squad of Piedmontese soldiers: it was a tedious and annoying night.

The Queen covered her mouth with her hand.

_He came out of his quietness like a hunting hound that had scented a deer. And then he looked at her._

_She raised her eyebrows in inquiry, just as the coach slowed, horses whinnying, and booted feet landed on the running board with soldiers clawing at the door. Piedmontese, by the livery. She shot one with Felton’s gun, punched another in the throat and kicked him away as he gurgled, using the short, wide sword he dropped as leverage on the third… At the other door, Aramis shot his pistol then grabbed the leather handle and lifted himself up to hook his legs around another’s neck, breaking it, and hauling him inside so that he could take powder, shot, and weapons off the man's belt. He kicked the man out and, bracing himself against the sway of the coach, reloaded by feel in the darkness, every movement swift and economical._

_He glanced up, eyebrows quirked, and said, “If it pleases, Madame?”_

_Then the next wave of soldiers caught up with the coach._

“He went through those Piedmontese like a polecat in a chicken coop. A gift for many-on-one fights, that one had. It's useful in a soldier, I imagine, and in a number of other dirty trades.” She paused, reflective, “Some of us, even at our fairest, have a wing dipped in blood. It is how we are made.”

Through the window she heard a rattling in the courtyard of the convent - a cart and horses. Supplies, perhaps, though it was the wrong time for this day of the week. (She’d had reason to track the comings and goings of the few women left here, confined in a room with nothing to do but observe their dealings, and sleep, and talk.)

Perhaps it was even the tardy Madame d’Artagnan, wouldn’t that be jolly? She yawned. It had been a long day.

“The coachman died in the fight, so I could not drag the location of his employers out of him, and the inside of the coach smelt rank so we took the driver’s bench in the end. I took the reins - if I have to do something as undignified as sitting up front in the rain then I’m the one who’ll be steering.” She frowned, remembering. “He never tried to take them off me.” She set down her tumbler to gather her grey shawl over her shoulders. “And was that my first clue or was he always like that, I wonder.”

_He sat beside her on the high wooden seat sparking like a cat with a storm coming, all bright eyes and disordered fur. And still he didn’t ask her about the actual papers she was carrying. Or Athos. Or… anything. Courtesy, perhaps. She reined in the team of horses at a crossroads and glanced at him - he’d fallen asleep, between one breath and the next, with the rain still falling on him._

“I dragged the man home,” she said. “Where he slept for the rest of the night, and a day, and another night, and came down to breakfast in my latest minion’s second-best suit without blinking an eye.” She smirked. “He scared the maid. She squeaked sometimes, like a little mouse, but she couldn’t gossip so we got along quite well.”

She picked up the glass again; there were a few drops left in it. She shrugged again. A useful, all-purpose gesture, that. “Once his clothes were off it became apparent he had been beaten, quite thoroughly. His shirt and breeches were as rough as a farmer might wear, and all that was in the pockets was a pair of pennies and an old rosary… It was not a soldier of France I was dealing with, but a fugitive, or a beggar.”

“Is that when you offered him a job?”

Cloth rustled as she shook her head. “We never talked about it at all: I had work to do, and he was helpful and… why seek to bait that particular dog, hm?”

“Perhaps you were trying to be kind?” The Queen tilted her head, eyes narrow. “But if you did not speak of it, how did you know he did not remember anything?”

She sniffed, both affronted and embarrassed, hand reaching automatically to the ribbon that covered the scar at her throat. “Aramis is an excellent faker, but he slipped up eventually. Once one knows what to look for…”

_She’d been stuck in the upstairs inn-room for days, burning out the last of the fever from an infected wound in a backwater village in Alsace. The maggots had been taken away the day before, but her foot still itched outrageously. It was another day of sunshine scraped out of the late autumn. And she was bored._

_Kitty had fled long since, after the last thrown mug - had she been aiming at the maid in particular? No! The woman had no spine - and she had no taste for any of the books picaresque, anatomical, or delving into theological theory that had been left on the bedstand for her perusal. Aramis was moving about the room like a bee, pausing for a few brief moments before taking off again. He’d go if she told him, she knew, or if she asked, and she suspected he was there so that she could be annoyed with him - he had an odd way of looking at things, sometimes. She wondered if he had tended_ Athos _like this, once upon a time. There was another mug on the bedstand, full of a steaming tisane._

_“Eh, Aramis?” she asked, sipping from it. Lavender and chamomile, this time. “Did we ever talk about my last day as the French King’s mistress-en-titre?”_

_“I don’t know, did we?” he asked, adjusting the window curtains. With the air of humouring an invalid he said, “Perhaps you can tell me again.”_

_“It was the day of the eclipse of the sun,” she said, “and the court meant to observe it at an astronomer’s chateau…” It was a good story, full of grand images, desperate gambles, wild rides, bloodshed, and the simple drama of the tossing coin. She fancied she told it well and he listened, intent._

_She touched his wrist when she was done. “What do you think of that?”_

_“I think the King was a fool,” he said gravely, “and your husband only a little less so.”_

_She looked at him._

_His eyes crinkled in concern, a ray of late afternoon sun painting his irises tea-coloured. “Why are you sad?” he asked. “The Musketeer that died, falling through the window. Did you know him?”_

_“Perhaps a little,” she said._

She tipped the last drops of crimson cordial down her dry throat and said, grinning at the Queen. “The longest and most honest relationship of my life was built on fakery, secrets, and wilful obliviousness, Your Majesty.”

“Call me Ana, if you will,” the woman said, very grave.

She swallowed down an unexpected huff of laughter. “What are you thinking, Ana?”

“That it is very lonely to be the only person who remembers something, like holding a single candle in a very large, very dark room." Her eyes dropped, lifted. "Was he happy?”

She thought back over a colourful, busy year. “Yes, I think he was,” she said. “Barring a few specks here and there. He smiles - smiled - with his eyes, if you knew to look for it.”

“Were _you_ happy?”

“You know,” she said curiously, “I don’t think anyone has asked me that before? Not even Athos when he loved me. Yes, I was happy.”

The Queen - Ana - nodded slightly, dainty and straight-backed as ever. “Well then.”

She swallowed down a yawn, and Ana touched her wrist. “You look very tired,” she said softly. “We can speak again tomorrow.”

“If you like,” she said carelessly, not looking up as the Queen gathered her skirts around her and rose.

There was a knock on the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We'll be hopping back to Aramis' story for a bit.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed these two interacting with each other.
> 
> Cheers.


End file.
